ors
who are still with us. No conductor ever laid down his _baton_ with a
more cordial and sincere sense of gratitude to those who took their
several parts in his performance.

One chief experiment which the Review was established to try was that
of signed articles. When Mr. Lewes wrote his Farewell Causerie, as I
am doing now, he said: "That we have been enabled to bring together
men so various in opinion and so distinguished in power has been
mainly owing to the principle adopted of allowing each writer perfect
freedom; which could only have been allowed under the condition of
personal responsibility. The question of signing articles had long
been debated; it has now been tested. The arguments in favour of
it were mainly of a moral order; the arguments against it, while
admitting the morality, mainly asserted its inexpediency. The question
of expediency has, I venture to say, been materially enlightened
by the success of the Review." The success of other periodicals,
conducted still more rigorously on the principle that every article
ought to bear its writer's signature, leaves no further doubt on the
subject; so that it is now almost impossible to realise that only
fifteen or sixteen years ago scarcely anybody of the class called
practical could believe that the sacred principle of the Anonymous was
doomed. One of the shrewdest publishers in Edinburgh, and also himself
the editor of a famous magazine, once said to me while Mr. Lewes was
still editor of this Review, that he had always thought highly of our
friend's judgment "until he had taken up the senseless notion of
a magazine with signed articles and open to both sides of every
question." Nobody will call the notion senseless any longer. The
question is rather how long the exclusively anonymous periodicals will
resist the innovation.

Personally I have attached less stern importance to signature as an
unvarying rule than did my predecessor; though, even he was compelled
by obvious considerations of convenience to make his chronique of
current affairs anonymous. Our practice has been signature as the
standing rule, occasionally suspended in favour of anonymity when
there seemed to be sufficient reason. On the whole it may be said that
the change from anonymous to signed articles has followed the course
of most changes. It has not led to one-half either of the evils or of
the advantages that its advocates and its opponents foretold. That
it has produced some cha